(1953- ) American Paleobiologist (Climate Change)
Of growing concern in environmental science today is global warming (climate change). Scientists are trying to determine if the addition of massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by humans is causing a radical rise in temperature. Most of the research involves ice coring at the poles and then chemically analyzing that ice to chart the changes. However, can it be verified that what happens at the poles reflects what happens in the mid-latitudes? That is the question that Paul Olsen posed in his quest to establish a baseline for climate variation. After all, normal climate variations must be determined before the current changes can be judged abnormal. His idea was to core the sediment in the base of a large deep lake. The problem is that glaciers made most lakes; they are too young or heavily altered by human activity to yield the fine results required in such an analysis. Older existing large lakes that would meet the criteria, like Lake Tanganyika in eastern Africa, are virtually inaccessible to the type of ship that would be needed to core sediments to an appropriate depth. Olsen came up with the unique idea of coring an ancient lake system to chart climatic variations over a long period. In a multimillion-dollar project, he drilled a continuous 10,000-foot core of the Mesozoic Newark Basin in New Jersey. The Newark Basin contains the most continuous sequence of lake bed and related sediments of any in the world. It covers literally 30 million years of sedimentation. By studying the variations in lake depths and sedimentation rates, Olsen found multiple cycles of climate change caused by Milankovitch cycles, and other terrestrial and extraterrestrial influences. Even though these sediments are more than 200 million years old, the controlling astronomical processes should not have changed appreciably with time. In this way, he set a baseline against which all other climate change models must be compared.
With all of the attention to the climate change research, it is easy to forget that Paul Olsen is a renowned paleontologist/paleobiologist. His specialty is the systematics of lower vertebrates with emphasis on intrinsic biologic innovations. He and his graduate students have been studying Mesozoic tetrapods and especially their footprints in the rocks of the Newark Basin for several years. Through the combination of the coring (stratigraphy) and studies of animal populations and their evolutionary adaptations, Paul Olsen and his team have established the Newark Basin as the benchmark against which all other multidisciplinary studies must be measured. Even small evolutionary changes can be evaluated in terms of their stimuli. Several important publications that reflect Paul Olsen’s research include, “Continental Coring of the Newark Rift Basin,” and “Tectonic, Climatic, and Biotic Modulation of Lacustrine Ecosystems: Examples from the Newark Supergroup of Eastern North America.” His paper, “The Terrestrial Plant and Herbivore Arms Race—A Major Control of Phanerozoic Atmospheric CO2,” connects all of Olsen’s areas of interest.
Paul E. Olsen was born on August 4, 1953, in New York City. He grew up in Newark and Livingston, New Jersey. He attended Yale University, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in geology in 1978. He continued his graduate studies at Yale University, where he earned a master of philosophy and a Ph.D. in biology in 1984. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science at the University of California at Berkeley in 1983-1984. In 1984, he accepted a faculty position at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, where he is currently the Storke Memorial Professor of Geological Sciences. He is also a research associate at both the American Museum of Natural History and the Virginia Natural History Museum.
His research accomplishments have attracted much media attention. Interviews with him have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including, Time, Discover, National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, American Scientist, Science Digest, The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Herald, Los Angeles Times, and many others. He has also been interviewed on television and radio including, Good Morning America, NBC News, and many others both national and international. He also played a prominent role in the acclaimed PBS series Walking with Dinosaurs. Primarily as a result of his climate change work, Paul has become one of the most prominent media spokespersons for the geologic profession.
